Today we have for you a review of an oldie(relatively) but goodie. Crysis, the game that broke a thousand computers. Or rather a million, I'll stop trying to make old school greek epic phrases and just give you the facts: It's a review. It's of the original crysis. It may be a bit of an old game but I think this review has pointed out well that it's still a relevant contender in the market.

Review after the break

Let's get things started with the obvious. All scores are out of 10.

GRAPHICS

If you had a computer back in 2007 and you were interested in gaming on it, you probably heard about the game that was kicking everyone's computers in the balls when it was released. If not, you should not have had your head buried in the ground trying to avoid GFWindows Live. Usually the first thing noticed about the game when shown to someone new, even to this day the visual elements to Crysis remain comparatively fantastic. While earlier showings of the game had a few features that were cut, a majority surprisingly made it through to the released game. From the destructible tin-roofed buildings to interacting with forest environments and everything in between them the game was an improvement on its spiritual predecessor, Far Cry, and miles ahead of almost every other game of it's time in virtually every optical way. Built on Crytek's CryEngine 2.0, the game uses (the recently released at the time) DirectX10 to render out beautiful island landscapes and frozen tunnels with many user-changeable parameters. Because the engine's components were easily alterable, user modifications began to appear to streamline graphical improvements while not toasting the computer than ran the game. On the opposite side, once hardware was released that could support even more insane configurations, users began to release improvements to the game that increased texture resolution and other very noticeable differences. (see right) If in 2007, you had taken a game from 2002 and compared graphical ability to any game released that year, you probably would have laughed at the difference. Although one could argue as we come closer to photorealism in games that differences will become less noticeable, it is still an amazing technical feat to have a game still look beautiful by standards half a decade after release (and still fun to play...!)

GAMEPLAY

Have you ever wanted to shoot down a tree and have a branch crush an enemy? Maybe throw a barrel at a building and cause the entire thing to explode? How about power throwing a turtle and causing it to bounce off of 3 people? With Crysis, your violent imagination was the possibility. Because of the open layout of the game, enemies were engageable from different angles and tactics. The player's different abilities (cloak, strength, speed, armor, and technology integration), added by a suit of armor in game, allowed for total customization of how situations were approached. If you felt like being a rambo, you could charge in with speed and destroy everything before they knew you were on them. If you felt more sneaky, you could engage a cloak to bypass enemies altogether or flank them from behind. Alternatively, if you just felt like being a boring joe, you could (by choice) remain in armor mode the entire game and pick off enemies from half a mile away. But in the end, the choice was yours and the game made it really feel that way. Speaking of choice, there were also alternate missions to be had in Crysis. While not exactly Mass Effect scale in decision, a few (shown as yellow dots on the minimap) could result in additional information or weapons to help Nomad stop from deflating like a balloon. The weapons themselves were for the most part universally customizable (allowing you to stick a sniper scope on a shotgun, for those that cant seem to stop drooling at times) making it seem as if the pieces used for those purposes were actually in a bag and not just glued onto your gauss rifle. All in all, the game was fun to play and not just something to pass time with. Though if you wanted to play it again....

REPLAYABILITY

This, to me, is where Crysis falls a bit short. Before Picard comes to cut my head off, let me explain why. Although there are a few mission differences built into the game, the overall story remains exactly the same (and it isn't that strong to begin with). Once you kill a Korean or Ceph using every possible method possible, you lose the motivation to continue playing. Treking through jungles, icelands, and beaches can only last for so long before you figure out an easiest path for your playstyle, at which point everything is becomes optional at best. There are also a few problems that are commonly annoying as well. The characters' odd ability to de-synch from what they are saying is more than enough to break immersion once the "wow" factor wears off at the end of the first playthrough, and the final level is so full of particle effects that it is hard to focus on what you are doing.

So, overall, I like crysis as a game. It is in my top 5 games of all time, but I probably won't be coming back to it any time soon. So, final score?

The second game did take a few steps back in a lot of features, and turned into another CoD me too. Was sadly expected with consoles though....

Yeah, I've got mixed feelings on consoles. On one hand they make gaming more accessible (easier to figure out, cheaper, etc) to the overall public. On the other hand, they seem like they cripple innovation due to the always present hardware limitations. I could say they contribute to the whole copy cat situation we have with the FPS genre right now, but I suspect that if we lived in a PC gaming only world, it would exist there too.